IAB Banners

During the UX Magazine presentation at the Greek Design Panorama 2005 , right after I wrapped up my speech, I was asked a question from the audience which more or less was the following:

“This site, as you told us, has been built on an 8x grid, each column being 120 pixels in width, how do you see any IAB standard banners fitting into your design. Doesn’t the prospect of advertising concern you?”

I came to a quick response: “We’re not interested in money, so banners do not concern us”.

We’re not interested in money

I’d like to apologize to the inquirer publicly because my answer was just half true. I mean, we’re not doing this for money, if we were then this site would have been flooded with banners. The part that’s untrue is that banners don’t concern us. In fact I believe we’ve headed down the right alley when we decided upon the 8x grid and 120 pixel width columns.

Judging by IAB standards , 120 pixels fit the most common banner sizes. But even if we move on to the most cumbersome ones, we can still see that any derivative of 120 will accommodate the banner.

So basically what I really had to answer was: we were not interested in money, but advertisement was an issue when designing UX Magazine.

About the Author(s)

Howard Mann is the founder of Brickyard Partners, a business strategy agency based in Portland, OR. Prior to founding Brickyard Partners in 2001, Mann owned a premier international logistics company with over 140 Million in revenue, six U.S. offices and a global network of over 40 agents worldwide.

As that business came under severe pressure from the previous economic downturn and industry consolidation, Howard lead the company out from those treacherous times by returning to the basics that make every business great and completing 6 acquisitions that re-imagined the business so it was highly attractive to buyers. Finding that “secret sauce” did not come easily but has fueled his purpose to help other business leaders to never have to go through what he endured. Through real world experience and those hard times in the “trenches” of business he has learned that it is not following the latest fad, copying competitors or adding complexity that makes a business truly great. His pragmatic approach and knowing what it feels like to sit in the CEO/Owner chair is what makes his work so different and effective.

In addition to his strategy, marketing and communications work, Mann coaches a select group of entrepreneurs, CEO's and business owners. His highly focused workshops and keynotes help executive teams take aggressive action to unlock the true potential of their organizations and build remarkable businesses that endure. In good times and bad. Online and off.

Howard is a sought after speaker both in the U.S. and around the world. He writes frequently on his blog about the importance of the basics and reconnecting to the passion that too often gets lost as businesses mature.

Comments

June 22, 2010

So this guy introduces himself as being from Google then asks what a browser is. Everyone is thinking about Google, and answers the question "What is Google?"

There's more lessons to be learned from this about Google's own branding than people's perception of what a browser is. Google's success as a search technology is overshadowing many of the corporation's other technologies, certainly in the eyes of the person on the street.

I would question the statistics on this survey because I don't believe this survey was objective

So this guy introduces himself as being from Google then asks what a browser is. Everyone is thinking about Google, and answers the question "What is Google?"

There's more lessons to be learned from this about Google's own branding than people's perception of what a browser is. Google's success as a search technology is overshadowing many of the corporation's other technologies, certainly in the eyes of the person on the street.

I would question the statistics on this survey because I don't believe this survey was objective

Not sure if this is the place, but I'm desperately seeking some insight in the following challenge:

I have a current design that is NOT on a grid. We want to move the current design to a grid-based layout. This means we're gonna change the sizes of the current columns to fit the grid. But no redesign.

Now, in one of the columns there is a 300px banner. This fits nice in the current design. But when moving to a grid, it always seems to be either too big or too small to fit nicely into a column layout (flush to the sides of the containing column).

Would this mean that to fit the grid, the banner would always have space around it as opposed to the exact fit it has now?

Why are you not interesting in money? If you can get money for some good things, why not?
Looks like you hate to tell everyone then you need money and this ok ;)
All of us need money – for live, for creative etc. If you don’t them – send me your address – I want to visit you.

I never thought about creating a grid system to use when i design my UI. I will use this; as we are in the process of redesigning our site, thescripts.com (new version will be heavily focused on web based software and services).

I actually don’t think you were incorrect when you answered the question that way because it particularly pertained to UX Magazine. If ads were considered to be a part of this site’s business objective, I believe it would have been taken into account when designing this site and possibly another solution would have been arrived at depending on requirements.

To me, the goal of this site seems be an informative forum, not a revenue generating ad-stravaganza, which I say kudos. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an ad, at least I feel that you guys would integrate it so that it’s not so obtrusive.

Oh, and I honestly don’t think you needed to justify the design of UX Magazine after-the-fact, it is fortunate there are IAB sizes that work with the decided grid system, but again if ads weren’t part of the goal (or future goals), then it doesn’t matter.

I actually don’t think you were incorrect when you answered the question that way because it particularly pertained to UX Magazine. If ads were considered to be a part of this site’s business objective, I believe it would have been taken into account when designing this site and possibly another solution would have been arrived at depending on requirements.

To me, the goal of this site seems be an informative forum, not a revenue generating ad-stravaganza, which I say kudos. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an ad, at least I feel that you guys would integrate it so that it’s not so obtrusive.

Oh, and I honestly don’t think you needed to justify the design of UX Magazine after-the-fact, it is fortunate there are IAB sizes that work with the decided grid system, but again if ads weren’t part of the goal (or future goals), then it doesn’t matter.

I never thought about creating a grid system to use when i design my UI. I will use this; as we are in the process of redesigning our site, thescripts.com (new version will be heavily focused on web based software and services).

Why are you not interesting in money? If you can get money for some good things, why not?
Looks like you hate to tell everyone then you need money and this ok ;)
All of us need money – for live, for creative etc. If you don’t them – send me your address – I want to visit you.